If you're particular hotel, restaurant, or region is having high turn-over, you might want to think twice before blaming your in-house HR team or friendly neighbourhood recruiter! According to workplace management expert; Tony Wilson, 90% of staff leave because of poor managers, not their jobs.
“When an employee resigns, many managers point their finger at the reasons beyond their immediate control. In most cases they should point it straight at themselves”, he said. According to Wilson, the single biggest issue which drives an employee to resign is not the job, salary, workplace environment or the company. Instead it is the quality of their relationship between employees and their direct managers.
In Wilson's book, "Jack and the Team that Couldn’t See", he suggests that most mangers spend too much time on operations, systems, strategy, products and services. “While these are important pieces in the performance puzzle, they spend relatively little time developing their people - their greatest competitive advantage”, he said.
In the largest survey of its kind, global research organization Gallup surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers to examine why employees stay or leave. The research found the immediate boss is the primary reason people stay and thrive in an organization, and is also the main reason people leave. Recent research from Indian University also examined employees across different work sectors and found that a worker’s relationship with their boss is nearly equal in importance to their relationship with their spouse when it comes to overall well-being.
How workers feel about their managers even affects physical health. A study of hospital workers conducted by Chilterns University College in the UK found that nurses working for hospital supervisors with poor management styles had significantly higher blood pressure than nurses working for bosses judged as understanding and considerate. As a result, the nurses with bad bosses had a roughly 20% higher risk of heart disease.
Being a good manager may seem a simple concept, but it poses a challenge when we recognize that most managers are promoted according to their ability to do a job well, not on how well they can build a team and get the best out of people.
“This probably wasn’t a consideration in any job prior to being a leader. Almost always, a manager is expected to easily transition without the necessary support and skill development”, said Wilson. “Despite the challenges, every manager needs to face the truth about how vital their relationship with their staff is. They must spend time developing their ability to lead and engage people. Get it wrong and staff will walk”, he added.
To avoid staff walking, better to drop the finger pointing game and tap into all your resources; HR, recruiter, managers, to face the challenge of proactively managing staff.
[Source: article by Lesley Horsburg, Recruitment Extra, October 2010]
Showing posts with label company leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label company leadership. Show all posts
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Do You Make Staff Sick?
Absences from the office are about a lot more than illness, experts say, and there's plenty a manager can do to reduce downtime caused by 'sickies'.
Believe it or not, organizational research suggests staff in many workplaces together develop something of an unwritten agreement regarding how many sick days are acceptable each year. And, in many of those organizations, staff will ensure they take their quota, having legitimized their absence thanks to the behaviour of their manager. It all comes back to the manager.
A researcher at the forefront of absenteeism at work is Professor Gary Johns, an internationally respected Professor of Management at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. Two of the biggest causes of absence, he says, are feelings of unfairness in how staff are treated and social causation, or the imitation of the behaviour of others.
"There is no normal amount of absence," Johns says. "There are major differences across companies, countries and professions. But research shows staff tend to peg absenteeism behaviour on that of others around them. So when people join organizations, their attendance behaviour fluctuates for the first few months, but over time it gravitates towards the norm that has been established within their unit."
What causes absenteeism?
As illness-related explanations are generally the only reasons accepted for unplanned absences from work, other reasons can go unnoticed or unmeasured, says Dr. Stefani Yorges, Graduate Co-Ordinator Psychology at Pennsylvania's West Chester University in the US.
"There can be sensitive issues that prevent people from going to work, such as difficulties with partners, problems with children, or drug dependency," Yorges says. "Other factors may include psychological difficulties or perceptions that their work life is unfair in terms of return for input.
"There are also individuals who need to exert some control over their work environment, and without this, take time off. Others may feel their efforts are not recognized and that 'no one cares anyway'."
Johns estimates that around 30-50 per cent of sick days in a typical organization are not due to illness. One of the strongest root causes of absenteeism is perceived unfairness in the workplace, which is absolutely under the control of individual managers.
"Employees are very sensitive to fairness and absenteeism is one of the few ways they can affect the personal balance sheet quickly. There's a point at which this behaviour can be seen as legitimate. Managers have to be supersensitive to fairness," Johns suggests.
Reducing absenteeism
People respond to how they're treated and the solution to absenteeism begins with leadership and management. Managers must get to know their staff personally, not to a stage where they're becoming intrusive on the staff member's life, but they should know which hockey team they follow and how many kids they have. Leadership should be visible and this starts with the development of visible relationships.
Employees need to know what their place is in the company and how what they do impacts on where the company is going. They need to feel part of the company and know their opinion is valued. If there are good relationships and clear expectations and staff feel managers care about them then staff won't want the company to suffer.
Targeting three specific areas will likely bring significant change in absenteeism levels.
Improve the skills of current supervisors; recognize and reward employee contributions; and increase employee involvement in decision-making processes.
It's vital for managers to convey the importance of good attendance to employees, as well. Too often the matter will only become an issue when somebody is found to be seriously exploiting the system, but this does nothing to change habits of the mass of staff taking their regular amount of days.
If a manager conveys expectations that staff will come to work each day, and is honestly concerned when there are problems with absence, then chances are that absenteeism rates will decrease.
[Source: article by Chris Sheedy from Management Today, September 2010]
Believe it or not, organizational research suggests staff in many workplaces together develop something of an unwritten agreement regarding how many sick days are acceptable each year. And, in many of those organizations, staff will ensure they take their quota, having legitimized their absence thanks to the behaviour of their manager. It all comes back to the manager.
A researcher at the forefront of absenteeism at work is Professor Gary Johns, an internationally respected Professor of Management at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. Two of the biggest causes of absence, he says, are feelings of unfairness in how staff are treated and social causation, or the imitation of the behaviour of others.
"There is no normal amount of absence," Johns says. "There are major differences across companies, countries and professions. But research shows staff tend to peg absenteeism behaviour on that of others around them. So when people join organizations, their attendance behaviour fluctuates for the first few months, but over time it gravitates towards the norm that has been established within their unit."
What causes absenteeism?
As illness-related explanations are generally the only reasons accepted for unplanned absences from work, other reasons can go unnoticed or unmeasured, says Dr. Stefani Yorges, Graduate Co-Ordinator Psychology at Pennsylvania's West Chester University in the US.
"There can be sensitive issues that prevent people from going to work, such as difficulties with partners, problems with children, or drug dependency," Yorges says. "Other factors may include psychological difficulties or perceptions that their work life is unfair in terms of return for input.
"There are also individuals who need to exert some control over their work environment, and without this, take time off. Others may feel their efforts are not recognized and that 'no one cares anyway'."
Johns estimates that around 30-50 per cent of sick days in a typical organization are not due to illness. One of the strongest root causes of absenteeism is perceived unfairness in the workplace, which is absolutely under the control of individual managers.
"Employees are very sensitive to fairness and absenteeism is one of the few ways they can affect the personal balance sheet quickly. There's a point at which this behaviour can be seen as legitimate. Managers have to be supersensitive to fairness," Johns suggests.
Reducing absenteeism
People respond to how they're treated and the solution to absenteeism begins with leadership and management. Managers must get to know their staff personally, not to a stage where they're becoming intrusive on the staff member's life, but they should know which hockey team they follow and how many kids they have. Leadership should be visible and this starts with the development of visible relationships.
Employees need to know what their place is in the company and how what they do impacts on where the company is going. They need to feel part of the company and know their opinion is valued. If there are good relationships and clear expectations and staff feel managers care about them then staff won't want the company to suffer.
Targeting three specific areas will likely bring significant change in absenteeism levels.
Improve the skills of current supervisors; recognize and reward employee contributions; and increase employee involvement in decision-making processes.
It's vital for managers to convey the importance of good attendance to employees, as well. Too often the matter will only become an issue when somebody is found to be seriously exploiting the system, but this does nothing to change habits of the mass of staff taking their regular amount of days.
If a manager conveys expectations that staff will come to work each day, and is honestly concerned when there are problems with absence, then chances are that absenteeism rates will decrease.
[Source: article by Chris Sheedy from Management Today, September 2010]
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